Korean Airline Accidents: Full History and Safety Today

On the morning of December 29, 2024, Jeju Air Flight 2216 from Bangkok came down at Muan International Airport in South Jeolla Province. Of the 181 people on board, two survived. Before that, if travelers outside Korea knew anything about Korean airline safety, it was usually a bad reputation from the 1990s or the image of Asiana 214 smoking on the runway in San Francisco in 2013.

This guide puts the whole record in one place: every fatal accident involving a Korean airline since 1970, what investigators concluded, and what each one changed. It ends with the practical side, the rules that now apply on Korean flights because of these accidents.

Are Korean Airlines Safe to Fly in 2026?

On the record of the last quarter-century, the two big full-service carriers look solid, and the low-cost sector has one catastrophic accident whose cause is still being investigated. Korean Air has flown passengers without a fatal accident since August 1997. Asiana’s three fatal accidents came in 1993, 2011 (a cargo flight) and 2013, and none since. Until December 2024, none of Korea’s low-cost carriers (Jeju Air, Jin Air, T’way, Air Busan, Air Seoul, Eastar and others) had ever had a fatal crash.

Korea’s own government ratings reflect that single event. In the transport ministry’s annual air service evaluation, a fatal accident brings an F for safety unless the airline shows it was not at fault. Jeju Air got that F in the 2024 evaluation and an A+ in the 2025 evaluation announced in April 2026, a jump the airline’s pilots’ union itself questioned, according to Shinailbo. Air Busan dropped to a B after its 2025 cabin fire, Herald Economy reported.

Numbers alone don’t capture why the record looks the way it does. Korean aviation went through a painful reckoning around 1999, and much of what you experience on a Korean flight today, from the cockpit culture to the power bank rules, traces back to specific crashes.

📋 Fatal accidents and attacks involving Korean airlines, 1970–2026

For KAL 015 and KAL 803, published death tolls differ slightly between sources (14 or 15, and 79 or 80). The figures above follow the most commonly cited counts.

1970s–80s: Shot Down, Bombed, Hijacked

The deadliest chapters of Korean aviation history were not accidents at all. Korean Air Lines, then the country’s only airline, flew through the Cold War between two hostile neighbors.

KAL 902 (1978). A Boeing 707 flying from Paris to Seoul by way of Anchorage made a navigation error near the magnetic pole and wandered into Soviet airspace. A Soviet fighter fired a missile, and the crew brought the damaged jet down on a frozen lake in Karelia, near the Finnish border. Two passengers died; 107 people survived.

KAL 007 (1983). On September 1, 1983, a Boeing 747 from New York to Seoul by way of Anchorage drifted hundreds of kilometers off course and was shot down by a Soviet Su-15 near Moneron Island, west of Sakhalin. All 269 people aboard died. An ICAO investigation completed in 1993 found the autopilot had most likely been left in a heading mode rather than following the navigation system, and the crew did not notice. Two weeks after the shootdown, the White House said it would make GPS available to civilian aircraft once the system was operational, a pledge often cited as a turning point for civilian satellite navigation.

KAL 858 (1987). On November 29, 1987, a Boeing 707 from Baghdad to Seoul blew up over the Andaman Sea. Two North Korean agents had left a bomb disguised as a radio and a liquor bottle in an overhead bin during an earlier stop. All 115 aboard died, many of them Korean construction workers heading home from the Middle East. One agent, Kim Hyon-hui, was captured alive and later confessed.

Two genuine accidents also belong to this era. KAL 015 touched down short of the runway at Gimpo in fog in November 1980, killing 15. KAL 803, a DC-10 on its way to Tripoli in July 1989, crashed short of the runway in fog while the instrument landing system was out of service, killing about 80 people, some of them in houses on the ground.

Why Did Korean Air Crash So Often in the 1990s?

Between 1997 and 1999, Korean Air had three fatal crashes that killed 240 people, counting those on the ground, plus a runway overrun that wrote off another jet. This is the period that shaped the airline’s reputation abroad.

Asiana 733 (1993) came first. Asiana, founded in 1988 as Korea’s second airline, lost a Boeing 737 on a domestic flight to Mokpo in July 1993. After two missed approaches in heavy rain, the crew descended below the minimum safe altitude on a third try and hit Mount Ungeo in Haenam. Sixty-eight of the 116 people aboard died.

Korean Air 801 (1997) was the turning point. In the early hours of August 6, 1997, a Boeing 747-300 from Seoul hit Nimitz Hill about 5 km short of the runway in Guam. The airport’s glideslope was out of service, so the crew was flying a less precise approach. According to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), 228 of the 254 people aboard died. The NTSB blamed the captain’s failure to properly brief and fly the approach, and the first officer’s and flight engineer’s failure to monitor and challenge him. Contributing factors included the captain’s fatigue, Korean Air’s inadequate crew training, and the FAA’s intentional inhibition of the minimum safe altitude warning system in Guam.

Then came 1999. In March, a Korean Air MD-83 overran the runway at Pohang (no deaths). In April, an MD-11 freighter crashed into a residential area of Shanghai after the crew confused a clearance of 1,500 meters with 1,500 feet, killing three crew and five people on the ground. In December, a 747 freighter crashed in a forest right after taking off from London Stansted. The UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch found that the pilots ignored instrument warnings, prompted by the flight engineer, while a faulty attitude indicator showed the captain the wrong picture.

The consequences were serious. Delta suspended its codeshare with Korean Air in April 1999, and in August 2001 the US Federal Aviation Administration downgraded South Korea’s aviation oversight to Category 2, which blocked Korean airlines from adding new US routes. Korea regained Category 1 in December 2001, three months and 20 days later.

Korean Air rebuilt its flight operations with outside help. It brought in David Greenberg, a former Delta vice president of operations, to run the operation, standardized cockpit communication in English, and overhauled training. When ICAO published its global safety oversight audit results in March 2009, Korea scored 98.89%, the highest in the world, Hankook Ilbo reported.

2011–2015: Asiana's Hard Stretch

After Korean Air’s turnaround, the next run of accidents belonged to Asiana.

Asiana cargo 991 (2011). A Boeing 747 freighter from Incheon to Shanghai reported a fire in the cargo hold and crashed into the sea about 130 km west of Jeju. Both pilots died. Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) concluded that the fire started on or near pallets holding dangerous goods, including lithium-ion batteries for hybrid cars and flammable liquids. The exact ignition source was never found.

Asiana 214 (2013). On July 6, 2013, a Boeing 777 from Incheon came in too low and too slow on a clear day at San Francisco and hit the seawall. Three of the 307 people aboard died, all of them teenage passengers from China, and 49 people were seriously injured. The NTSB found the crew mismanaged the descent, the pilot flying unintentionally switched off automatic airspeed control, and the crew went around too late. The board also pointed to the complexity of the autothrottle system and gaps in the airline’s training.

Asiana 162 (2015). An A320 landing at Hiroshima in poor visibility came in short, struck the localizer antennas in front of the runway and skidded onto it. No one died; Japan’s Transport Safety Board counted 28 minor injuries among the 81 people aboard.

What Happened to Jeju Air Flight 2216?

Jeju Air Flight 2216, a Boeing 737-800 from Bangkok, was approaching Muan International Airport at about 9 a.m. on December 29, 2024, with 175 passengers and 6 crew on board. Two of the passengers were Thai nationals. As it approached, the tower warned of birds, and the pilots declared a mayday and went around. The plane then came back to land in the opposite direction without its landing gear down, slid along the runway on its belly, ran past the end and hit a concrete embankment that held the airport’s localizer antennas. It exploded and burned. 179 people died. The only survivors were two flight attendants seated at the tail.

It became the deadliest air crash ever on South Korean soil, surpassing the 2002 Air China crash near Busan. For many Koreans, the embankment became the center of the story: a hard concrete mound, known in Korean as a 둔덕 (dunduk), where international guidance calls for structures built to break away.

What the investigation has established so far:

• Bird strike confirmed. The preliminary report in January 2025 said feathers and blood from Baikal teal, a migratory duck, were found in both engines.
• Recorders stopped early. Both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder stopped recording about four minutes before the crash.
• Engine findings disputed. A briefing planned for July 2025 was called off after families objected that it focused on pilot error. Media reports said it would have stated that the crew shut down the less damaged engine. No published report has confirmed this.
• The embankment question. In January 2026, Money Today reported that a simulation study commissioned by the investigation board concluded everyone could have survived if the localizer had been mounted on a breakable structure instead of the concrete mound.

After the crash, the government ordered concrete localizer embankments at other Korean airports rebuilt as lightweight or buried structures, and announced wider bird-strike measures such as detection radar and thermal cameras.

Close Calls With No Deaths

Several more recent events made headlines without costing lives. Some of them are the reason behind rules you will run into as a passenger.

📋 Notable non-fatal accidents and incidents

The Air Busan fire mattered most for everyday travel. In March 2025, ARAIB said the fire most likely started from internal insulation failure in a power bank stored near the overhead bin in row 30. Korea changed its power bank rules within weeks.

What Should Travelers Know Before Flying a Korean Airline?

You don’t need to do anything special, but a few rules and habits on Korean flights come directly from the accidents above.

Want to know which airline Koreans actually prefer? See which airline Koreans love in 2026. For other disasters that shaped the country, read Seoul disaster sites then and now and our guide to natural disasters and travel safety in Korea. Flying on to Jeju? Is Jeju safe in 2026 covers the island, and getting from Incheon Airport to Seoul covers your arrival.